迪尔凯姆并不是第一个试图把社会学变成一门科学的思想家。奥古斯特·孔德希望将科学方法扩展到社会科学，赫伯特·斯宾塞则提出了一种进化功利主义方法，并将其应用到社会科学的不同领域。尤其是迪尔凯姆挪用了孔德的实证主义的元素以及他研究社会的科学方法的元素。迪尔凯姆分析了社会的不同部分是如何运作以创造一个功能整体的，以及他对有机类比的运用，在很多方面都受到了斯宾塞自己的功能主义分析品牌的启发。然而，迪尔凯姆对这些社会学的尝试持批评态度，认为他们的分析与形而上学的假设没有充分的分离。这些都是在迪尔凯姆认为的Comte和Spencer的社会发展的单线模型中发现的，这是基于社会进化的先验法则。当迪尔凯姆将进化论的元素融入自己的理论时，他用了一种批判的方式，他对发展一种宏大的社会理论并不感兴趣，更感兴趣的是发展一种观点和方法，这种方法可以以不同的方式应用。因此，迪尔凯姆设计的社会学方法试图摆脱Comte和Spencer的形而上的实证主义，并与Comte仅仅将自然科学的科学方法延伸到社会的方式有很大的不同。
英国伦敦论文代写:科学的思想家
Durkheim was not the first thinker to attempt to make sociology a science. Auguste Comte, who wished to extend the scientific method to the social sciences, and Herbert Spencer, who developed an evolutionary utilitarian approach that he applied to different areas in the social sciences, made notable attempts and their work had a formative influence on Durkheim. In particular, Durkheim appropriated elements of Comte’s positivism as well as elements of his scientific approach to studying societies. Durkheim’s analysis of the ways in which different parts of society operate to create a functioning whole, as well as his use of the organic analogy, was in many ways inspired by Spencer’s own brand of functionalist analysis. However, Durkheim was critical of these attempts at sociology and felt that neither had sufficiently divorced their analyses from metaphysical assumptions. These were to be found particularly in what Durkheim considered Comte and Spencer’s unilinear models of social development, which were based on a priori laws of social evolution. While Durkheim incorporated elements of evolutionary theory into his own, he did so in a critical way, and was not interested in developing a grand theory of society as much as developing a perspective and a method that could be applied in diverse ways. The sociological method that Durkheim devised, thus, sought to be free of the metaphysical positivism of Comte and Spencer and differed greatly from Comte’s mere extension of the scientific method of the natural sciences to society.
